After Rothenburg we drove northwest to the Rhine Valley. We stayed in a little town called St Goar right on the river. St Goar (pronounced 'sahn-gwar') translates to "so many castles close by that you can't toss a rock and not hit one."
The Rhine river is a major river, over 800 miles long, connecting Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France and The Netherlands. An immense amount of commerce travels that river. While we were there we saw huge barges constantly moving up and down the river. Back in the day, the various rulers along the river taxed the river traffic. Their enforcement technique was to build a castle in the hills overlooking the river and empty their cannons on the boats that didn't stop to pay their tribute.
I'm not sure how many different castles we saw, in various states of repair, but they were on about every bend in the river. I've include a sample of them. You'll see a couple of pictures that look like tunnels with the entrance shaped like a castle, they are railroad tunnels. You can't get away from the castle theme.
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